1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for the collection of market research data from a plurality of cooperating retail stores.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Various arrangements have been employed for the collection, summarization and forwarding of Point-Of-Sale purchasing information from retail stores for purposes of market research since the advent of Point-Of-Sale (POS) optical scanners and the widespread use of the Universal Product Code (UPC) to identify retail products. Typically, retail purchase data is summarized by an in-store POS controller or by a separate store computer attached to the POS controller in the store or, if the store is part of a large retail store chain, by a central or host computer at the headquarters of the retail store chain. The summarized retail purchase data is then typically forwarded to the users of the data by any one of a number of different data storage and transmission techniques, for example, by magnetic tape, disk or diskette, by telephonic data transmission or by over-the-air data transmission.
Known marketing research systems are employed for monitoring television viewing and listening habits of cooperating households and also for such monitoring of individual audience members within the household. The following prior art patents bear at least some relation to one or more of the disclosed features of the present invention:
__________________________________________________________________________ INVENTOR(S) U.S. PAT. NO. TITLE __________________________________________________________________________ Haselwood 3,651,471 DATA STORAGE AND TRANSMISSION et al. SYSTEM Haselwood 3,772,649 DATA INTERFACE UNIT FOR IN- et al. SURING THE ERROR FREE TRANS- MISSION OF FIXED-LENGTH DATA SETS WHICH ARE TRANSMITTED REPEATEDLY Larsen 3,899,775 AUTOMATIC STORE TRANSACTION SYSTEM AND TERMINAL THEREFOR Sundelin 4,002,886 ELECTRONIC PRICE DISPLAY UNIT Crepean 4,139,149 DISPLAY SYSTEM et al. Call 4,290,688 APPARATUS FOR COLLECTING MAR- KET SURVEY DATA FROM UNIVER- SAL PRODUCT TYPE CODED ITEMS Eskin et al. 4,331,973 PANELIST RESPONSE SCANNING SYSTEM Cogswell 4,331,974 CABLE TELEVISION WITH CON- et al. TROLLED SIGNAL SUBSTITUTION Johnson 4,355,372 MARKET SURVEY DATA COLLECTION et al. METHOD Gomersall 4,500,880 REAL TIME, COMPUTER-DRIVEN et al. RETAIL PRICING DISPLAY SYSTEM Sarwin 4,521,677 PRODUCT CONTROL SYSTEM FOR SUPERMARKETS AND THE LIKE McKenna 4,546,382 TELEVISION AND MARKET RE- et al. SEARCH DATA COLLECTION SYSTEM AND METHOD Pejas et al. 4,588,881 SYSTEM FOR MONITORING THE MOVEMENTS OF GOODS INWARDS AND/OR OUTWARDS Kurland 4,603,232 RAPID MARKET SURVEY COLLEC- et al. TION AND DISSEMINATION METHOD Gomersall 4,630,108 PREPROGRAMMED OVER-THE-AIR MARKETING RESEARCH SYSTEM McKenna 4,658,290 TELEVISION AND MARKET RE- et al. SEARCH DATA COLLECTION SYSTEM AND METHOD Yourick 4,775,935 VIDEO MERCHANDISING SYSTEM WITH VARIABLE AND ADOPTIVE PRODUCT SEQUENCE PRESENTATION ORDER Humble 4,825,045 SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CHECK- OUT COUNTER PRODUCT PROMOTION Humble 4,833,308 CHECKOUT COUNTER PRODUCT PRO- MOTION SYSTEM AND METHOD Dinerstein 4,872,113 CREDIT CHECK SCANNER DATA ANALYSIS SYSTEM Daniel 4,972,504 MARKETING RESEARCH SYSTEM AND et al. METHOD FOR OBTAINING RETAIL DATA ON A REAL TIME BASIS __________________________________________________________________________
The McKenna et al. '382 patent concerns, inter alia, a data collection system for collecting at a central location television viewing data and retail purchase data from a plurality of cooperating households. Each of the households includes a hand held optical scanner for reading bar codes, i.e., UPC codes, associated with retail products purchased by the household. Scanned retail product purchase data and the television viewing data are stored in a common memory in the household and are periodically transmitted by telephone to a central site for processing and market research analysis.
The Eskin et al. '973 patent, the Cogswell et al. '974 patent and the Wright, Jr. '589 patent disclose, inter alia, a market research system utilizing a plurality of cooperating retail stores for obtaining and transmitting to a central location retail product purchase information concerning a plurality of cooperating panelists. The POS scanners in each of the cooperating retail stores scan bar encoded panelist identification cards and the UPC codes on the products purchased by each such panelist. Each retail store's in-store computer then stores a record of the products purchased by each such cooperating panelist, which record is subsequently transferred to a market research company at a remote location for analysis and possible correlation with television viewing data obtained from the same cooperating panelists.
The Gomersall '108 patent is directed to an over-the-air market research system and method and discloses, inter alia, the collection of retail product purchase information from a plurality of cooperating households by means of an UPC scanner provided to each household. Alternatively, such retail product purchase information may be obtained from cooperating retail stores in a test area. Each store's computer stores and periodically forwards a record of the retail products purchased by each cooperating household, identified by a scanned or manually entered identification code for each cooperating household, which information is periodically transmitted by telephone to a central computer for analysis by market researchers. The information transmitted typically includes at least an identification of the cooperating household, an identification of the retail product purchases made by that household and the identification of the retail store transmitting the data. As disclosed in the '108 patent, the data collected, stored and transmitted by each such store may also include the price of each retail product purchased, the date of the purchase and the time of the purchase.
The Larsen '775 patent discloses, inter alia, an automatic store transaction system in which a keyboard is provided at each POS terminal for entering data. A transceiver is also provided at each POS terminal for transmitting data to and receiving data from a central processor. The system is particularly useful for inventory control and for providing data on sales rates and checker productivity.
The Johnson et al. '372 patent, reissued as U.S. Letters Patent No. Re. 31,951, discloses, inter alia, a market research data collection system in which market research data, corresponding to the retail products purchased by a cooperating panelist, is transmitted by telephone from each cooperating household to a remotely located central computer for processing and market research analysis. The data collection system includes a hand held optical scanner located in each household for scanning and storing UPC codes and for entering and storing other related data, for example, the identification of the retail store at which the retail products were purchased.
The Haselwood et al. '471 and '649 patents disclose, inter alia, systems in which a computer at a central location periodically contacts by telephone each of a plurality of remotely located data storage and handling units in a plurality of cooperating households. Television viewing data is then transmitted from the remotely located data storage and handling units to the central location by telephone in the form of frequency modulated audio tones.
The Nickerson et al. '030 patent discloses, inter alia, a television receiver monitoring system for collection data concerning viewing habits and viewing preferences of television viewers located in a plurality of cooperating households and for transmitting that data by telephone to a central location for further processing and analysis. A remote unit in each remotely located cooperating household includes a microprocessor, a control memory, a data store memory and a modem for initiating a telephone call to the central location. The data store memory stores data concerning television channel selection and the times thereof and television viewer reaction. At a preselected time, each such remote unit initiates a telephone call to the central location and transmits the collected data stored in the data store memory by telephone to the central location. During the telephone call, the central location can transmit new control information to each remote unit for storage at the remote unit and for controlling the operation of the remote unit until the time of the next telephone communication between the remote unit and the central location.
The Gomersall et al. '880 patent discloses, inter alia, a computer operated retail pricing display system for displaying pricing and other information in real-time at the shelf or bin location of a product in a retail store.
The Pejas et al. '881 patent discloses, inter alia, an inventory control system having an optical scanner for scanning bar codes associated with particular inventory items.
The Kurland et al. '232 patent discloses, inter alia, a market survey collection and dissemination system that provides for the downloading of survey questionnaires from a central processor by telephone or by a cable television channel.
While many of the above prior art systems and methods constitute significant improvements over prior manual systems and methods of collecting market research data, significant disadvantages exist with respect to many of the above prior art systems and methods. The prior art systems have not effectively monitored causal data for use together with retail sales transactional data. A long-felt want and need has existed for a new and improved market research system and method that monitors and collects causal data for use together with retails sales transactional data without unacceptable time delays while minimizing the time required for collecting the causal data.